Tag: autistic book party

The Plot: A ship’s crew are stranded after a computer virus infects their spaceship, and the more they try to find repairs for their ship and retrieve their missing comrades, the more complex the web of conspiracy around them seems to become.

Autistic Characters: Two crew members, named David and Hayek, and also, the author.

“Nantais” is a space opera in which all the usual fun space opera things come into play – cool aliens, interplanetary governments, space pirates, sentient ship’s computers, and so on. It contains some autistic humans, as well as some cool aliens that autistic readers will be able to relate to.

I don’t have much to say about the autistic humans, which is unusual for me. “Nantais” is being marketed in a way that makes a lot of noise about how the whole book is “very autistic” without ever mentioning the word “autism”, and how this is a radical authorial choice. I’m not sure I would describe either David or Hayek as “very autistic”. They both have autistic traits, but these traits are described in a very blink-and-you-miss-it way; in fact, I ended the book still unsure if Hayek was meant to be on the autism spectrum or not. Hayek is a fairly standard “go out of the spaceship and shoot guns” character, and the only autistic trait that I noticed from him is the use of a weighted vest.

There is nothing WRONG with having characters like this. Nor in refusing to other them or navel-gaze about their disability. In fact, a character like Hayek is nice to see since we don’t usually picture autistic people in that role. I’m just not convinced it’s an especially radical way of writing, with or without the word “autism”, especially since neither character seems to require the type of accommodations that necessitate societal change.

The aliens are good, though. “Nantais” is at its most interesting when Reynolds uses alien forms of communication to lightly upend common wisdom about communication in humans. Different species use different body language, including flapping and otherwise gesturing with the hands. Niralans appear to have no body language at all, and seem eerily emotionless to humans. But their nonverbal communication is actually some of the richest and most intense in the galaxy, for the few who have a sufficiently close physical connection to read it. Autistic readers and others whose emotions are misperceived by those around them will be delighted to spend time with the Niralan characters.

(As a side note, this might be another reason why I wasn’t super impressed with Hayek as an autistic character; he has an initial reaction to the main Niralan character’s lack of body language which more or less exactly mirrors the way NT ableists in real life respond to autistic people whose body language they can’t read. Not only did this make me subjectively annoyed with him, but it seemed like an odd and not-quite-realistic choice if he is meant to be autistic himself.)

Truth be told, I was a little underwhelmed with “Nantais” overall. The pacing is a little jumpy, and the way events progress doesn’t always feel coherent or satisfying. There is a cool subplot with a sentient ship’s computer that is trying to fight off its virus. The computer functions very differently from an Earth computer, in ways that are often interesting, but it irritated me that the term “computational linguistics” in this universe appears to mean something completely divorced from what it means in real life.

I think this is the most “meh” review I’ve ever written. There is nothing really wrong with the representation in “Nantais”; it didn’t click for me on a craft level, but there is nothing truly horrible about the book on that level, either. I did quite like the aliens, but the rest of it didn’t do a lot for me.

The Verdict: YMMV

Ethics Statement: Verity Reynolds and I have had quite a few business interactions; she beta read my still-unpublished novel and was a developmental/acquisitions editor for MONSTERS IN MY MIND. MONSTERS and NANTAIS were both published by the same press. I read her book because she emailed me a copy asking me for a blurb. I did, in fact, provide a blurb, which is an excerpt from this review. All opinions expressed either here or in the shortened blurb are my own.

This book was not chosen by my Patreon backers; I simply reviewed it because I decided that, having already read and blurbed it, a review would not be much extra labor. Reviews chosen by my backers are still in the works. If these reviews are valuable to you, consider becoming a backer; for as little as $1, you can help choose the next autistic book.

For a list of past/future/possible Autistic Book Party books, click here.

The Plot: An autistic boy discovers he can talk to a ghost, is the reincarnation of Simon Magus (sort of), and needs to save the world.

Autistic Character(s): The title character.

This book is a fun urban fantasy with roots in medieval alchemy and ceremonial magic (not surprising, since Burley is a medievalist). It’s also a book with a pretty badass #ownvoices autistic protagonist from a somewhat under-represented part of the spectrum.

Mouse is a high school student who is “primarily non-verbal” – he can squeak out a word or two in an emergency, usually, if there’s no other option, but he prefers to communicate by writing notes. He is intensely sensitive and overwhelmed by the social information he sees in other people’s faces, which is why he never looks there. He’s taught in an integrated classroom with neurotypical classmates, but he isn’t especially talented at school; he mainly keeps his head down and tries to get through the day.

All these are great things to see in an autistic protagonist, and I liked seeing them. Unfortunately, the book kept making strange and inconsistent choices in how it portrayed them.

I feel really bad critiquing an #ownvoices author’s portrayal of autism, which makes this critique hard to write. It’s possible I’m missing something huge. But I’m just going to soldier on and show some examples of what I’m talking about.

In the beginning of the novel, Mouse is so painfully over-sensitive that he literally never looks at his classmates’ faces, recognizing them instead (in a cute touch) by their shoes. When he is pressed to look a classmate in the eye, the cascade of information there sends him straight into panic:

Ginnie crouches down in front of him. She lifts his bangs to look under and he can’t help it, he can’t close his eyes fast enough. He imagines it’s like being electrocuted; he sees it all in under a second, hears it like a building wall of static in his mind. He sees a dubious look on the surface of the most shining, blinding green eyes; he sees that she’s curious, interested; beyond that, she’s a little worried about breaking social taboos but a little excited by the prospect of it; he sees that she’s often a little bored and seeking a thrill but that she’s generally harmless to herself and others; that she’s the kind of person who smiles a lot but cries easily and that she desperately, desperately wishes life were simple enough to be solved with single, grand gestures rather than the day-in-day-out course corrections that constitute the waking world; and beneath it all he sees something more—an intricate reweaving of times and places, of ordinary days and extraordinary ones, the sadness of the mundane, and a crystalline, blinding hope she places in the new. And below even that he sees something bigger, darker, deeper—
Mouse recoils violently, nearly dropping what’s left of his lunch.

This is a bit of an exaggerated description, but it’s meant to be; it will later be revealed that Mouse is not just autistically sensitive but “a sensitive” in a magic sense. (As a side note, I know a lot of quite hyper-empathic autistic people. The part that I find unrealistic is not the amount of information, per se, but rather the fact that Mouse is able to process the information fast enough to consciously identify what all those different parts of it are before he recoils.)

Also, the description of Mouse’s shutdown immediately following this is just really good:

Even Mouse knows it was the wrong reaction. Everything’s gone quiet and they’re looking at him. The guitar has stopped. Mouse has his knees up to his nose and he can tell, even with his eyes closed tight, that they all have concerned looks. But he can’t move, can’t look. His stomach is a knot twisted to its snapping point, his heart is beating in his throat, he wants to throw up. Like a turtle curled up in its shell, he can’t risk extending his legs even to run away. He imagines for a moment the impossibility of ever moving again, of being frozen like this forever; but he doesn’t have to imagine, only remember the years of small rooms and soft voices, the gradual peeling open of a tulip flower cut too soon for the table.

As soon as the plot really gets going, though, Mouse seems to become less and less impaired for no discernible reason. We meet one magical character who is able to put up shields that make it more comfortable for Mouse to look at him; and we see Mouse practicing basic magical skills, like moving energy around to boil water. But we don’t see him practicing how to manage the onslaught of information that he sees when he looks at anything. Yet, the depictions of this onslaught of information, which were so effectively done at the beginning of the book, seem to just fade away as if the author forgot about them. First he’s no longer identifying anybody by their shoes. Then he is able, carefully, to look his love interest in the eye. Then all of a sudden we are reading scenes like this one:

The rest of the day passes in montage, and the following night, and the rest of the week. Sitting at his desk, exchanging glances with Bliss or Anna in the batcave, zoning out during dinner. He tosses and turns at night, wondering when the next attack will come.

Suddenly eye contact is a totally fine thing that we’re doing all the time, and I really do feel like I missed something.

We see some flash-forwards (this book has a couple of cool, timey-wimey twists) to an older Mouse in a dystopian world, who has somehow become calm and strong and commanding. He still doesn’t talk, but all the other impairments seem to have either gone away, or become un-noticed by the people around him. It’s hard to say, since nothing in those flash-forwards is actually from Mouse’s point of view.

We also have the problem that Mouse is a reincarnation of Simon Magus – or, not a reincarnation exactly, but a fragment of Magus’s consciousness that was passed forward in time. But the original Simon Magus wasn’t autistic, and has no problem talking. In emergencies, Mouse finds himself instinctively drawing on the original Simon Magus – which means he suddenly becomes a confident person who can conveniently talk and shout out verbal spell incantations at these emergency moments, including in the book’s climactic scene. This is a somewhat frustrating choice to me; I would much rather have seen Mouse figuring out ways to deal with magical emergencies without speaking.

Furthermore, since the original Simon Magus wasn’t autistic, Mouse is convinced that there must be a reason that he is autistic in his current life. Toward the end of the book, the reason is revealed:

Simon, that is, Simon Magus, he was a master strategist, he could see the way everything was going to go and planned ahead every time. But this time he couldn’t make the equations work—there wasn’t enough data. So he made Mouse to be the opposite of him—he can’t see, but he can feel. He can sense a pattern in the chaos and act right away. His intuition is exactly the opposite kind of knowledge to Simon’s.

Which, you know, sure – and I like the connection between autistic patterns thinking and magical intuition. Except I’m not sure how “he can act right away” jibes with his shutting down in the face of information earlier in the book. And the whole thing feels awfully close to two really problematic tropes – one being the person who seems to be disabled but it’s actually just magic, and the other being the autistic person whose character development consists of becoming less autistic as the story goes on.

This is all sort of nitpicky stuff; at the end of the day, we are still looking at an #ownvoices autistic hero who gets to be at the center of his own story, who has wonderful friends, family, and allies, and who saves the world. It’s well-written on a craft level, and it deals with its subject matter respectfully. If you’re not too bothered by the kinds of complaints I’m making here, and you’re up for a fun urban fantasy romp with medieval mages and mind-bending twists, then “Mouse” is for you. For me, it didn’t all quite work; but I’ll certainly be looking out for more from this author.

The Verdict: YMMV

Ethics Statement: I think I have vaguely interacted with Richard Ford Burley on Twitter once or twice, but that’s all. I read his book by reading an e-copy that the publisher emailed to me in hopes of a review. All opinions expressed here are my own.

This book was chosen by my Patreon backers. If these reviews are valuable to you, consider becoming a backer; for as little as $1, you can help choose the next autistic book.

For a list of past/future/possible Autistic Book Party books, click here.

The Plot: In a fantasy kingdom, a series of magical murders heralds the arrival of something even more sinister.

Autistic Character(s): The author.

“Citadel of the Sky” is set in a nation ruled by the Blood, a powerful magical family. The Blood are the kingdom’s mystical protectors, with magical powers that differ significantly from those of ordinary wizards.

One of those powers is the ability to enter the “phantasmagory” – a psychic realm which is like a collective unconsciousness made physical. Stray thoughts and emotions in the phantasmagory take surreal physical forms, and so do more important magical things. But a member of the Blood who enters the phantasmagory is completely oblivious to the outside world, and can’t leave again until they genuinely desire to. Older members of the royal family often develop a kind of dementia, spending more and more time in the phantasmagory, and becoming more and more confused when out of it.

This linking of royal blood to disability leads to some interesting worldbuilding, including a system in which each member of the Blood has their own “Regent” – a sworn servant who helps them with everyday tasks. (Right now I am all about the idea of caretaking as a service, rather than a form of authority, so I really liked the Regents.) It also means that, aside from magical threats, many everyday affairs of state are carried out by a different group of nobles – a group which is happy, overtly or covertly, to seize power from the inattentive Blood.

As well as the fictional disability of the phantasmagory, both of “Citadel of the Sky”‘s viewpoint characters are non-neurotypical in ways that more closely parallel the real world. Princess Tiana is young, scattered, impulsive, and likely has a form of attention deficit. Kiar, her bastard cousin, is more focused and serious – but also has intense social anxiety.

The challenge of writing a protagonist like Tiana is that the plot has to stay focused and forward-moving, even when the protagonist isn’t. Tzavelas doesn’t always rise perfectly to this challenge. Although many exciting things happen, the pacing often feels slightly off, as if the characters are making scattershot and separate responses to each event rather than having their own throughline.

I should also warn, for readers who are allergic to such things, that “Citadel of the Sky” is the first in a five-book series, and its ending resolves very little.

Still, at its best, “Citadel of the Sky” is a fun and surreal epic fantasy in which non-neurotypical women get to be princesses and chosen ones. That is a kind of story that we definitely need more of!

The Verdict: Recommended-2

Ethics Statement: I have never interacted with Chrysoula Tzavelas. I read her book by buying an e-copy for my Kindle app. All opinions expressed here are my own.

This book was chosen by my Patreon backers. If these reviews are valuable to you, consider becoming a backer; for as little as $1, you can help choose the next autistic book.

For a list of past/future/possible Autistic Book Party books, click here.

The Plot: Sparkling vampires are running amok in Michigan, and it’s up to Isaac – a “libriomancer” who can pull fictional items out of books – to stop them. But the vampires may only be the tip of the iceberg…

Autistic Character(s): Nicola Pallas, the Regional Master of the Porters (a magical organization including libriomancers and other magicians).

So, I will say this up front. Nicola Pallas is cool. She’s also hardly in this book at all. She shows up for a few scenes, and they’re good scenes, but that’s about it. Her role in this book is to be the trope of the authority figure who tries to pull Isaac off the case when things get out of hand. She does play that role well, and her decisions are ones that make good logical sense based on the information and concerns that she has.

What we do see of Pallas, in terms of her characterization, is fun. She’s a bard who does magic by using music, and who keeps an inordinate number of magical creatures as pets. She has a rather flat affect, but Hines never confuses this with actually having no feelings; it’s clear that she is, at times, fearful and concerned and having other appropriate emotions about the plot, even if she expresses them differently than others. I will admit I have a weakness for steely, cool-headed women in positions of power, and Pallas’s snarkily logical messages to Isaac play right into that:

“Deb said someone had hacked our communications,” I said warily. “I’ve already had one Porter try to kill me this week.”
“This connection is now secure. We’ve heard nothing further from Mrs. DeGeorge [the Porter who tried to kill Isaac]. Her apartment was empty, and she appears to have gone underground. Perhaps literally. As for myself, either I’ve been turned by our enemy and therefore already know any information you might share, or else I remain human and Regional Master of the Porters, in which case I would appreciate your report.”
That certainly sounded like Pallas.

Aside from this speaking style, Pallas’s autism also comes across in small gestures, such as the fidgeting she constantly does with her jewelry. Isaac as a narrator isn’t very well-informed about autism, but his adventuring partner, Lena, is able to fill him in:

“How exactly did Pallas react when you told her I had found the other libriomancer, and the thing that came through the book after us?”“I have a harder time reading autistics, but-”“What?”
She blinked. “You didn’t know?”
“I don’t have access to her files.”
“Neither do I,” Lena said sharply. “But I’ve learned a thing or two living with Nidhi. I’ve been here for four days, long enough to get a sense of Nicola Pallas. She doesn’t express her emotions the same way you or I do. I think she’s frightened, though. When I first described what happened, she walked away from me in midsentence and started making phone calls. When she finished, she was playing with her bracelets and moving around like she wanted to run but didn’t know where.”
“She knows something,” I muttered. “Why wouldn’t she tell me?”
“Maybe because she knows how close you came to dying,” Lena said sharply.
I had no answer to that.

That’s pretty much all that happens, though. “Libriomancer” is a fun book, but readers who want a story specifically about Nicola Pallas should instead read Hines’s short story, “Chupacabra’s Song“.

The Verdict: Marginal

Ethics Statement: I have occasionally corresponded with Jim C. Hines. I read his book by checking out a physical copy from my local library. All opinions expressed here are my own.

This book was chosen by my Patreon backers. If these reviews are valuable to you, consider becoming a backer; for as little as $1, you can help choose the next autistic book.

For a list of past/future/possible Autistic Book Party books, click here.

[Autistic author] An autistic person named Mendel makes friends with a planet of sentient AI and becomes a cyborg. Along the way, he makes a decision that could change how the people around him think about autism.

This is a really interesting concept but the execution confused me. For instance: the other protagonist, Trevina, is surprised to hear that Mendel is not neurotypical; but only a few minutes later in the same scene she is thinking sophisticated thoughts about how difficult it has always been for him as an autistic person to operate in an NT world, without any indication that anything about these thoughts might be new. Soon afterwards, Mendel is justifying big decisions by saying that people have always refused to believe he can think – yet people close to him had no idea he was not NT until that day.

These parts of the story would work better for a character with a different diagnosis and treatment history, to such a dramatic extent that I wondered if the author had changed their mind about the character partway through writing and forgot to correct it – or if there’s something about how people are treated in this SFnal world that we’re not being told. As it is, despite some attempts at explanation, the motivation behind most of Mendel and Trevina’s actions remains opaque.

(Also, minor gripe: AI goes into Mendel’s brain and turns him into a cyborg without his informed consent, and no one including Mendel has more than a vague passing issue with this. Please don’t do that.)

I feel like, with a thorough edit, this would become a good story that has interesting things to say. I do like the way that the cyborg and AI characters’ minds are depicted. It’s certainly not a story that fails, in the sense of being insulting or dehumanizing, the way many NTs’ stories do. But the writing is so slapdash that most of its conceptual value gets lost in the shuffle. [Not Recommended]

*

A.C. Buchanan, “Puppetry” (Accessing the Future, April 2015)

[Autistic author] A war story about a soldier with a computer system in her brain that can take over her physical actions, and how she and her fellow soldiers manage a mutiny. Buchanan’s protagonist is not autistic, but has severe dyspraxia. The army’s system allows her to plan movements that look normal – but also prevents her from running away or taking any other initiative, even as basic as helping a wounded comrade without permission. Autistic readers will relate to the clever things the story has to say about cures, normalization, control, and autonomy. There is also an interesting thread about the accessibility implications of terraforming, which is something I hadn’t considered before. [Recommended-2]

*

Suvi Kauppila, “Wither and Blossom” (Samovar, March 27, 2017)

A story about a person who returns to the fantasy world that they and their autistic sister shared when they were young. I am not sure how I feel about the death themes in this story; the autistic character dies young of what is implied to be a suicide, although the adults in the story chalk it up to “wandering”. Most of the adults in these characters’ lives are quite ableist, and it’s only the narrator who takes the time to communicate with their sister and to share her world. It’s very easy for young dead disabled people in this type of story, as with tragic queer narratives, to be handled problematically. What saves this one for me is how the narrator genuinely values their sister, even when the people around them don’t. Their shared world is not merely a beautiful sad memory; both it and the sister herself are things that the narrator actively works to return to, even years later. The eventual success of these efforts presents the autistic sister as someone who both needs the NT narrator and has something to offer them, and whose world just might be more beautiful and real than the ableist “real” world. [YMMV, but I liked it]

*

Bogi Takács, “Some Remarks on the Reproductive Strategy of the Common Octopus” (Clarkesworld, April 2017)

[Autistic author] A story from the point of view of a sentient octopus, many generations after humans “uplifted” octopi and helped them communicate using a psychic interface. Of course, the humans were not completely benevolent when they did this – they wanted to use the octopi for something, and to use other humans as well. There are no autistic characters in this story, but it’s a story that interrogates the ethics of “animal uplift” tropes as only a story by a neurodivergent author could. [Recommended-2]

[Autistic author] A poem about a monster-slaying, Beowulf-like hero who is gradually becoming monstrous himself. There’s a lot of play with sound, rhyme, rhythm and alliteration in this poem; I would recommend reading it aloud. The descriptions of monsters and violence are visceral without becoming gratuitous, and the ending is well done. [Recommended-2]

Today’s Book: “So You Want to Be a Robot: 21 Stories”, a collection by A. Merc Rustad

Autistic Character(s): The author, among others!

“So You Want to Be a Robot” is a collection of speculative short stories – mostly fantasy (or sci-fi of the extremely fantastical variety), mostly dark, and mostly queer.

Rustad is the author of an essay called “I Don’t Want Your Queer Tragedy“, so it’s interesting to examine the collection in that light. Queer, trans, and nonbinary characters are thick on the ground in virtually every story, and are written with variety and respect. Most of them have strong, close, passionate relationships. Most of them, despite the darkness of many stories, get happy or hopeful endings.

It would be a mistake to view this as a light-hearted collection, though. Rustad is not an author who’s ever shied away from themes of monstrousness, abuse, or sacrifice. Several stories, particularly “Tomorrow When We See the Sun”, and “Winter Bride”, are not for the squeamish. Body horror and mutilation are common themes, as are protagonists living as the prisoners of seemingly omnipotent, sadistic beings. Some of these stories are so dark that it would be unrealistic for readers to ask for a happy ending; the glimmer of hope at the end is sometimes only a sense that the protagonist managed to accomplish something important before the night closed in.

But the collection isn’t all darkness either. Some stories, like the Nebula-nominated “This Is Not a Wardrobe Door”, are positively celebratory – often in explicit defiance of mainstream tropes, anti-queer or otherwise, that dictate what can and can’t be celebrated. Even in the darkest stories, love and community, including their queer varieties, aren’t devalued – they are vital to what the protagonists are doing.

Most of these stories are familiar to me as someone who follows Rustad’s work, but having them together in one book puts their shared traits into greater focus. Unapologetically being full of queer and trans characters is one of these traits, as is an intense sense of longing and loyalty, and the use of suns and other really bright lights to signify evil. So is a sheer density of invention that reminds me of Catherynne M. Valente or Yoon Ha Lee:

But let’s say you don’t get eaten by the roses. The circle you find yourself in next is a lightless tower that goes downward and never up. Chains spun from hanged men’s gurgles crisscross the stairs that don’t really exist. Beware of the ivy along the walls, for it grows on memory, until your mind is choked and full of leaves, and roots dig out through your skin and you forget why you came, and you sit there forever, and forever, and forever, and…

As for autism, Rustad’s writing isn’t as focused on this aspect of their identity as on their gender or sexuality. But a few stories do have autistic characters. I’ve previously reviewed “Iron Aria” and “Under Wine-Bright Seas” here, both of which are good stories with trans protagonists who read as autistic and have expressive speech difficulties.

A third story with an arguably autistic protagonist is the collection’s final entry, “How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps”. The protagonist of this story, Tesla, both falls in love with a robot and longs to become one themself. They express their feelings through lists, some of which make it clear to me that Tesla isn’t neurotypical:

1. Pretend you are not a robot. This is hard, and you have been working at it for twenty-three years. You are like Data, except in reverse.
2. (There are missing protocols in your head. You don’t know why you were born biologically or why there are pieces missing, and you do not really understand how human interaction functions. Sometimes you can fake it. Sometimes people even believe you when you do. You never believe yourself.)

I feel guilty claiming Tesla as an autistic character when “How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps” is so emphatically about other things. But it’s a deeply moving story about identity, dysphoria, depression, validation, and community, and it’s easily my favorite in the whole collection.

Overall, this is a very strong collection of stories that go well together. If you like what you’ve seen of A. Merc Rustad’s work online, you should definitely pick it up.

The Verdict: Recommended-2

Ethics Statement: A. Merc Rustad is someone I consider a personal friend. I asked them for a review copy and received a physical copy of their book from the publisher for free. All opinions expressed here are my own.

This novella was not chosen by my Patreon backers; I read it because I was excited enough about it to read it on my own time. Reviews chosen by my backers are still in the pipeline, and you can become a backer for as little as $1 if you’d like to help choose the next autistic book.

For a list of past/future/possible Autistic Book Party books, click here.

Today’s Book: “A Portrait of the Desert in Personages of Power”, a novella by Rose Lemberg

The Plot: A stranger arrives in the court of the Old Royal of the Burri Desert.

Autistic Character(s): The author.

“Portrait” is set in the intricate fantasy world of Birdverse, in the same series as many other stories and poems I’ve reviewed here, but it stands well on its own. Its plot is a romance, although a romance of a very atypical type.

The Old Royal, an ancient and powerful person who rules a desert city and teaches at a magical school, is our protagonist. The Old Royal is effectively immortal, thanks to their connection to a magical star which prolongs their life and reincarnates them, with most of their memories, when they die. A young person, the Raker, arrives in the Old Royal’s court – but the Raker is not like the other people who flock to the Old Royal’s school. Extremely powerful and with a force of personality that utterly dominates most people, the Raker leaves a wake that confuses and concerns the Old Royal’s court. Perhaps it’s only the Old Royal themselves who can tame him – if the assassins that are rumored to be in the area, or the mysterious ghost who appears when the Raker sleeps, don’t get to them first.

The Old Royal and the Raker have a sizzling attraction to each other that I can only describe as sexual, and they act on that attraction. But there’s no sex in the story, in the sense of anything involving genitals. Instead, the scenes between the Old Royal and the Raker are properly described as BDSM – except that BDSM practitioners in real life don’t have the kind of magic that can pierce someone’s skin with magic deepnames or turn you into a giant bird that flies around. These scenes manage to be wildly imaginative while also conveying intense desire and intense pleasure.

There’s also surprising depth to the kink in this story. Many nuanced issues around consent and negotiation are portrayed, including the question of whether and how someone as powerful as the Raker can ethically pursue relationships. Both characters make mistakes with each other, and then are quick to talk out those mistakes and fix them, which is basically my favorite romance trope ever.

Two other aspects of the romance provide refreshing representation. The kink in the story isn’t held to a perscriptive idea of what dominant and submissive partners should do: the Old Royal and the Raker are both tops, who negotiate complex and fulfilling interactions without either one psychologically submitting to the other. I also liked the way the Old Royal’s gender is handled. They’re gender fluid and undergo a magical gender transition every few years. They also preside over a festival where they help other trans denizens of Birdverse to do the same. In a very nice touch, Lemberg manages to make this aspect of the Old Royal’s gender clear without ever having to specify the anatomy of their current body.

I don’t want to spoil the ending, but I should mention something about it. I described the story as a romance, but romance as a genre contains some pretty strict expectations about endings. “Portrait” doesn’t have a traditional romance ending, but it also is not a tragic ending – this is not at all a queer tragedy story.

There is no autism anywhere in this story, but it’s another solid Birdverse installment with its detailed mythic setting, nuanced characters, and lyrical prose. If you’re into what it’s offering, don’t miss it.

The Verdict: Recommended-2

Ethics Statement: Rose Lemberg is someone I consider a personal friend. I volunteered when they asked who wanted an ARC, and received an ebook copy for free in advance of the novella’s publication date. All opinions expressed here are my own.

This novella was not chosen by my Patreon backers; I read it because I was excited enough about it to read it on my own time. Reviews chosen by my backers are still in the pipeline, and you can become a backer for as little as $1 if you’d like to help choose the next autistic book.

For a list of past/future/possible Autistic Book Party books, click here.

The Plot: A magic teacher from a planet of autistic people is shocked out of their routine by the arrival of a mysterious, injured stranger – and of some interplanetary intrigue.

Autistic Character(s): Almost everyone, including the protagonist!

Iwunen Interstellar Investigations is set on Eren, the aforementioned planet of autistic people, and so the first thing I want to talk about here is PLANET OF AUTISTIC PEOPLE.

We’ve seen disability-centric societies in previous Book Party episodes. “Kea’s Flight” is set in a society of developmentally disabled teenagers on a spaceship, but the teenagers are supervised by NT caregivers and robots. “This Alien Shore” gives us Guera, a planet where everyone, including the leadership, is disabled or mentally ill. But while there is a major character who comes from Guera, and some interesting scenes of intrigue between Gueran leadership, we saw very little of what Gueran life was like on the ground.

Iwunen Interstellar Investigations starts us off right at the beginning with scenes of relatively normal life on Eren. So right away this is EXCELLENT. Ranai ta-n Iwunen, a magic teacher, is depressed, and is hoping that a new student, Wuda-reyun, will give them something to do – but Wuda-reyun, who is from another planet, is presumptuous and seems ill at ease with Ereni culture.

By the way, Eren is not just a planet of autistic people. It’s a MAGICAL planet of autistic people, in which magic (called “māwal”) is interconnected with high SFnal technology. This is exactly my jam. Unfortunately, once we have gotten to know Ranai and Wuda-reyun, the plot begins to move at such a fantastically fast clip that we only see Ereni society in glimpses. There are some really delightful details woven in – people are formal about power relations so that they are easier to remember! The word for “rules lawyering” is monomorphemic! – but in general, the story is not interested in explaining a lot about Eren. The story is interested in ADVENTURE! Pretty soon, Ranai et al are in a different part of the galaxy entirely, investigating something involving interplanetary politics and weapons deals.

The plot in general goes by quickly enough that readers not familiar with Bogi’s work might get confused at some points. The “Concepts” section on the website does a good job filling in basic background about the universe, and I would recommend it during the early stages of reading.

As to the characters themselves, they are just fine. Almost everyone on Eren shares the “Ereni cognotype” (their word for autism), but characters have their own diverse personalities, from the cautious and authoritative Ranai to the naive and principled Abinayun to Mirun, the stranger from another world, who literally crashlands in the story with great eagerness and little control. We also see glimpses of Ranai’s daughter, Birayu, a creative child with atypical language skills who adores food. Birayu’s presence is important from a representation perspective, as it shows that not everyone on Eren is “high-functioning”, and that a range of abilities are accepted. Ranai is a single parent who employs someone to assist in raising Birayu, which seems to be an arrangement that is working out, although I would have liked to see them and Birayu interact more in early chapters.

There is also a hint of a budding romantic attraction between Ranai and Mirun, both of whom are nonbinary. Since Ranai is demisexual, this part of the story occurs gently and gradually and is still far from being resolved at the end of the season. (Mirun’s origins, by the way, are among the things that aren’t explained in this story. But if you are up for some darker fare, you can find them in “Toward the Luminous Towers“.)

Bogi objected when I filed this story, on Patreon, under “cheerful books”: some bad things are certainly implied, both in Mirun’s vaguely-hinted-at backstory and in the political intrigue. It’s just that, as a dedicated reviewer of books about autistic people, a disproportionate amount of my reading deals with ableism, abuse, and other Bad Things. There are some really well-done, really important books that talk about Bad Things, and Bad Things are pervasive in real life. But I cannot describe how refreshing it is to read an adventure with a happy ending in which autistic people run around without being constantly oppressed for being autistic. That’s what I mean when I call this one “cheerful”. I don’t want there to be fewer books about Bad Things, but I do want there to be MORE books like this one!

This is overall a sprightly, enjoyable read with many twists, and with a gaggle of interesting autistic characters whose personhood is never in question. I’m looking forward to further installments in the series, and I’m hoping that they will take us in even greater depth into the world of Eren.

The Verdict: Recommended

Ethics Statement: Bogi Takács is someone I would consider a personal friend. I read eir web serial by waiting for the chapters to be posted for free on eir website. All opinions expressed here are my own.

This book was not chosen by my Patreon backers; I read it because I was excited enough about it to read it on my own time. Reviews chosen by my backers are still in the pipeline, and you can become a backer for as little as $1 if you’d like to help choose the next autistic book.

For a list of past/future/possible Autistic Book Party books, click here.

I’m at a conference this week, so I’m going to be scarce, but not too scarce to point you in the direction of some great poetry by autistic authors. Here’s what I found in my 2017 Rhysling anthology that wasn’t already freely available elsewhere.

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Sara Backer, “The Genius” (Mithila Review 3)

I have never interacted with this author, but I suspect that this poem is a case of accidental representation. I suspect she wasn’t thinking of autism when she wrote it, but just happened to write a fairly accurate description of some autistic people’s experience: seemingly unoccupied, while intensely engaged in sensory processing, pattern recognition, and reflection. The unintended irony with this one is how it describes the titular character interrupted by “people who want to pay her / to achieve something”. I only wish real autistic people, who face one of the highest unemployment rates of any disabled group, were deluged by such offers. [YMMV]

[Autistic author] This is a part of the Journeymaker Cycle which I previously reviewed, as a whole, in my review of Rose’s collection. In fact, it’s the concluding installment. So I was quite surprised to find that it also stands well on its own. It is an emotional mythic poem about separation and personal growth, on a very large scale. [Recommended-2]

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AJ Odasso, “Sargasso Sea” (Remixt magazine 1.1)

[Autistic author] An intensely personal poem about intersex experience. The narrator struggles with feelings of monstrousness as lovers, doctors, and others deal with their body very poorly. Like one of Merc Rustad’s protagonists, they ultimately find the idea of monstrousness freeing. Fans of poems about difficult sexual and bodily experiences will enjoy this one. [Recommended-2]

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AJ Odasso, “Widening Gyre” (Not A Drop anthology)

[Autistic author] A poignant poem about things lost at sea, which may be irrecoverable despite rituals intending otherwise. [Recommended-2]

The Plot: An autistic witch named Beth travels to Witch Central in California in order to learn more powerful magic than what is practiced by her circle at home.

Autistic Character(s): Beth, as well as a small boy who shows up in one or two scenes.

This was a bit of a frustrating book for me. There was a lot I wanted to like. Witches! Witches with Asperger syndrome! NT witches learning how to accept and accommodate autistic witches!

Years ago, members of the Witch Central circle abruptly showed up in Beth’s circle, told them they were doing everything wrong, and left. Since then, Beth has always intended to find Witch Central and learn more. The main arc of the book revolves around her learning the ropes from Witch Central’s witches, and the other characters learning to adjust what they’re doing to make it easier for Beth.

This is a perfectly good main arc for the book, and its basic information about autism is pretty accurate, though sometimes oversimplified. But I found it irritating to read more often than not, for two basic reasons.

First, the book is all about learning to make accommodations for an autistic person. In the absence of another major conflict, the plot is constructed around Witch Central’s witches trying really hard to teach Beth, succeeding a little, failing a little, going into a knot of angst about why they failed, learning a valuable lesson, and trying again. This might not be a bad thing, except that a lot of the try/fail/angst/learn cycles didn’t really make sense to me. Take this scene, for example, when a witch named Nell watches her three daughters unexpectedly accost Beth:

Beth’s brain was practically shaking. Nell felt her temper firing up. Easy welcome streamed from her girls-and Beth was reacting like she was under machine-gun fire. She touched Ginia’s shoulder, trying to get mama bear back on the leash. “Those are all good ideas. Why don’t you go grab some cookies?” She added a gentle mental shove behind the words, and this time her triplets caught the unsaid message. Three subdued girls made their way into the house. Nell tried to resist the urge to kick at the woman who had deflated their everyday joy. “They’re excited about the party. Sorry if they were a bit overwhelming.” Her next sentence steamed out of its own accord. “Most people who come here for training want to be included in our lives.”

It’s not clear to me why Nell is even angry here, since no one told Beth that she was supposed to be friends with the other witches’ families. It’s not clear to Nell either, and she spends a lot of time soul-searching to find out why she reacted that way. The trouble is that a lot of the scenes in the book fail to make sense in this way. Beth gets overloaded by something, and the other witches freak out, because OMG, what does it mean if their normal practices are overloading to someone? Have they failed at training Beth?? Is it impossible for Beth to be a witch here??? Then I get annoyed at the characters and want to tell them to take a chill pill because sometimes overload just happens and is not meant as a judgment on anyone.

A lot of the solutions to the problems also fail to make sense to me. As another example, Beth is reluctant to go to a big family get-together and decorate for Solstice, because it’s too many people. But the witches agree to keep all the people from getting too noisy (by whatever neurotypical definition of “too noisy” they are using), and then everything works out fine and Beth is touched by their efforts to adjust things for her. Based on my own experiences around people and noise, I would say that while this strategy might work, it comes off as far too easy on the page.

The stakes in all of these problem/angst/solution cycles are also vastly unclear. Why is magic so important to Beth that she’ll get on a plane and go far out of her comfort zone, into a nest of strangers, to learn about it? Why is Beth’s magical development so important that the other witches will go so far out of their way to teach her, apparently without pay? Why do all the witches need to be best friends with each other? Why are we having this conflict in the first place?

“A Different Witch” doesn’t have the battle-and-action-y stakes of many urban fantasies. That’s not a bad thing; it’s good to see urban fantasy once in a while that’s quieter and not focused on fighting some bad guy. But apart from a few of the spells, I don’t really have a clear picture of how magic is useful in the witches’ everyday lives. Most of the magic in the book involves trying to make pretty bubbles out of different elements, which is cool, but seems a little bit underwhelming when you consider the big emotions and personal sacrifices that go into it. If magic is spiritually significant to the characters, as it is for many IRL pagans, I don’t have a clear picture of how that works for them, either. It’s possible that the answers to these questions might be clearer if I’d read the previous books in the series. But in the absence of that, I spent a lot of the book confused why everyone is angsting so hard about whether or not an autistic witch can make pretty bubbles the right way.

The second problem with the book is that I don’t have a clear picture of who Beth is beyond being a fire witch with Asperger syndrome. Every single thing she does in the novel seems to revolve around her autistic traits. Even the positive, complimentary things people say about her (she’s a strong person) immediately go back to her autistic traits (it takes strength to live with an autistic brain every day, SIIIGH). We know that she is a health food nut, but only because a sugary diet is hard for her autistic brain to handle. We know that she is a lesbian and manages a store with her NT girlfriend, but even her interactions with her girlfriend seem to revolve around her autistic traits:

It was only two words—but so much more rode in her partner’s eyes. Frustration welled in Beth’s veins. “Come on, Liri. You know I can’t read what you’re thinking. You have to tell me.” It was one of the central tenets of their relationship, and something Beth had learned sprang from love anyhow. You gave what your lover needed.

It’s not that I want there to be scenes in which an autistic person’s autism isn’t there. It’s just that the book seems to spend so much time saying “X and Y are hard for Beth because autism” that the rest of Beth gets lost. Aside from wanting to make pretty magic bubbles, there’s not much sense of what is important to Beth or of what Beth’s desires are. Even her relationship is described as having happened because Liri was patient and helped convince Beth that it was a good idea, not because Beth did any normal human things like having a crush on someone. Perish the thought.

A lack of agency on Beth’s part makes the book’s first problem more problematic. The witches of Witch Central were the ones who decided Beth’s magic isn’t good enough. They decide what Beth needs to do to fit in with them, even when it’s something (like getting along with their children) which logically doesn’t have a lot to do with magic lessons. They find out that, for Beth to do these things, she needs accommodations, so they work on that. But once they have the right accommodations, there is no more problem. Beth does magic their way. Beth gets along with them and their kids, and everybody gets to pat themselves on the back for becoming so understanding of Beth. The book spends a lot of time on making accommodations so an autistic person can do what you want them to, and very little time asking what the autistic person wants.

This is a subtle problem, and the book isn’t all bad. Beth does get to call out the Witch Central witches on things they’ve done wrong, including the arrogance of waltzing in and telling her she was doing magic wrong in the first place. There are some heartwarming scenes, including one late in the book where an older witch visits Beth and Liri’s shop and is genuinely interested and respectful.

Overall I think this is a very well-intentioned book, by an author who wanted to educate readers about autism and inclusion. It gets a lot right, but it has subtle problems with agency and tone which continually frustrated me. Unless you have a great love for cozy urban fantasies, I think most autistic readers would be happier reading something else.

The Verdict: YMMV, but I didn’t like it

Ethics Statement: I have never interacted with Debora Geary. I read her book by buying an electronic copy from Amazon. All opinions expressed here are my own.

This book was chosen by my Patreon backers. If these reviews are valuable to you, consider becoming a backer; for as little as $1, you can help choose the next autistic book.

For a list of past/future/possible Autistic Book Party books, click here.